Personality assessment: An overview - summary of chapter 11 of Psychological testing and assessment by Cohen & Swerdlik (9th edition)

Psychological testing and assessment (9th edition)
Cohen & Swerdlik (2018)
Chapter 11
Personality assessment: An overview

For laypeople: personality refers to components of an individual’s makeup that can elicit positive or negative reactions from others.

Personality and personality assessment

Personality

Dozens of different definitions of personality exist in the psychology literature.
Personality: an individual’s unique constellation of psychological traits that is relatively stable over time.

Personality assessment

Personality assessment: the measurement and evaluation of psychological traits, values, interests, attitudes, worldview, acculturation, sense of humour, cognitive and behavioural styles, and/or related individual characteristics.

Traits, types and states

Personality traits

There is no consensus regarding the definition of trait.
This book views psychological traits as attributions made in an effort to identify threads of consistency in behavioural patterns.
Personality trait: any distinguishable, relatively enduring way in which one individual varies from another.
The context is important in applying trait terms to behaviour.

• A behaviour present in one context may be labelled with one trait term, but the same behaviour exhibited in another context with another trait term.

A measure of behaviour in a particular context may be obtained using varied tools of psychological assessment.
Exactly how a particular trait manifests itself is, at least to some extent, dependent on the situation.

Personality types

Personality type: a constellation of traits that is similar in pattern to one identified category of personality within a taxonomy of personalities.
Whereas traits are frequently discussed as if they were characteristics possessed by an individual, types are more clearly descriptions of people.
It is more far-reaching.

The personality typology that has attracted the most attention from researchers and practitioners is associated with scores on a test called the MMPI.
Data from the administration of these tests are frequently discussed in terms of the patterns of scores that emerge on the sub-tests.
This pattern is referred to as a profile.
Profile: a narrative description, graph, table or other representation of the extent to which a person has demonstrated certain targeted characteristics as a result of the administration or application of tools of assessement.
Personality profile: profile of which the typical the targeted characteristics are traits, states, or types.

Personality states

The word state has been used in at least two distinctly different ways in the personality assessment literature

• An inferred psychodynamic disposition designed to convey the dynamic quality of id, ego and superego in perpetual conflict
• The transitory exhibition of some personality trait.
  A relatively temporary predisposition.

Measuring personality states amounts, in essence, to a search for and an assessment of the strenght of traits that are relatively transitory or fairly situation specific.

Personality assessment: some basic questions

In the most general sense, basic research involving personality assessment helps to validate or invalidate theories of behaviour and to generate new hypotheses.

Who

Who is being assessed and who is doing the assessing?
Some methods of personality assessment rely on the assessee’s own self-report.
Other methods of personality assessment rely on informants other than the person being assessed to provide personality-related information.

The self as the primary referent

People typically undergo personality assessment so that they, as well as the assessor, can learn something about who they are.
In many instances, the assessment requires self-report.
Self-report methods are very commonly used to explore an assessee’s self-concept.
Self-concept: one’s attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and related thoughts about oneself.
Inferences about an assessee’s self-concept may be derived form many tools of assessment.
Self-concept measure: an instrument designed to yield information relevant to how an individual sees him- or herself with regard to selected psychological variables.
Data from such and instrument are usually interpreted in the context of how others may see themselves on the same or similar variables.

Some measures of self-concept are based on the notion that states and traits related to self-concept are to a large degree context-dependent.
Self-concept differentiation: the degree to which a person has different self-concepts in different roles.
People who are highly differentiated are likely to perceive themselves quite differently in various roles.

Assuming that assessees have reasonably accurate insight into their own thinking an behaviour and assuming that they are motivated to respond to test items honestly, self-report measures can be extremely valuable.
Unfortunately, some assessees may intentionally or unintentionally paint distorted pictures of themselves in self-report measures.
Some testtakers truly may be impaired with regard to their ability to respond accurately to self-report questions.

Another person as the referent

In some situations, the best available method for the assessment of personality, behaviour, or both involves reporting by a third party.

In general, there are many cautions to consider when one person undertakes to evaluate another.
These cautions are by no means limited to the area of personality assessment.

• Leniency error
• Generosity error
• Severity error
• Error of central tendency
• Halo effect

Many factors may contribute to bias in rater’s ratings.

• Raters may make biased judgments consciously or unconsciously, simply because it is in their own self-interest to do so.
• The rater may feel competitive with, physically attracted to, or physically repelled by the subject of the ratings.
• The rater may not have the proper background, experience, and trained eye needed for the particular task.

When another person is the referent, an important factor to consider with regard to ratings is the context of the evaluation.
Different raters may have different perspectives on the individual they are rating because of the context in which they typically view that person.

Regardless whether the self or another person is the subject of the study, one element any evaluation that must be kept in mind by the assessor is the cultural context.

The cultural background of assessees

Test developers and users have shown increased sensitivity to issues of cultural diversity.

What?

What is assessed when a personality assessment is conducted?

Primary content area sampled

Personality measures are tools used to gain insight into a wide array of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours associated with all aspects of the human experience.

Many contemporary personality tests, especially tests that can be scored and interpreted by computer, are designed to measure not only some targeted trait or other personality variable but also some aspect of the testtaker’s response style.

Testtaker response styles

Response style: a tendency to respond to a test item or interview question in some characteristic manner regardless of the content of the item or question.

• Socially desirable responding
  Present oneself in a favourable light
• Acquiescent
  Agree with whatever is presented
• Nonacquiescence
  Disagree with whatever is presented
• Deviance
  Make unusual or uncommon responses
• Extreme
  Make extreme, as opposed to middle, ratings on a rating scale
• Gambling/cautiousness
  Guess- or not guess- when in doubt
• Overly positive
  Claim extreme virtue through self-presentation in a superlative manner

Impression management: a term used to describe the attempt to manipulate others’ impressions through the ‘selective exposure of some information coupled with suppression of (other) information’.
In the process of personality assessment, assessees might employ any number of impression management strategies for any number of reasons.
Testtakers who engage in impression management are exhibiting, in the broadest sense, a response style.

Some personality tests contain items designed to detect different types of response styles.
Because a response style can affect the validity of the outcome, one particular type of response style measure is the validity scale.
Validity scale: a subscale of a test designed to assist in judgments regarding how honestly the testtaker responded and whether observed responses were products of response style, carelessness, deliberate efforts to deceive, or unintentional misunderstanding.
Some test contain multiple validity scales.

Where

Where are personality assessments conducted?
Can be everywhere

How?

How are personality assessments structured and conducted?

Scope and theory

One dimension of the how of personality assessment concerns its scope.

• It may be very wide, seeking to take a kind of general inventory of an individual’s personality.
• There are also instruments much narrower in terms of what they support to measure.

To what extent is a personality test theory based or relatively atheoretical?
Instruments used in personality testing and assessment very in the extent to which they are based on a theory of personality.

Procedures and item formats

Personality may be assessed by many different methods.
The equipment required for assessment varies greatly, depending upon the method employed.

Measures of personality vary in terms of the degree of structure built into them.

The same personality trait or construct can be measured with different instruments in different ways.
Of course, criteria for what constitutes the trait measured would have to be rigorously defined in advance.

In personality assessment, information may be gathered and questions answered in a variety of ways.

Frame of reference

Frame of reference: aspects of the focus of exploration such as the time frame as well as other contextual issues that involve people, place and events.
Perhaps for most measures of personality, the frame of reference for the assessee may be described in phrases such as ‘what is’ or ‘how I am right now’.
Obtaining self-reported information from different frames of reference is, in itself, a way of developing information related to states and traits.

Q-sort technique: an assessment technique in the task is to sort a group of statements.

Two other item presentation formats

• Adjective checklist
• Sentence completion format

Scoring and interpretation

Personality measures differ with respect to the way conclusions are drawn from the data they provide.

Nomothetic vs idiographic

• Nomothetic approach: characterised by efforts to learn how a limited number of personality traits can be applied to all people
  Certain personality traits exists in all people to varying degrees. The assessors task is to determine what the strength of each of these traits are in the assessee
• Idiographic approach: characterised by efforts to learn about each individual’s unique constellation of personality traits, with no attempt to characterise each person according to any particular set of personality traits.
  To understand the specific traits unique to the makeup of the individual.

Intra- vs inter-indiviudal

• Inter-individual
  Most common in personality assessment is the normative approach, whereby a testtaker’s responses and the presumed strength of a measured trait are interpreted relative to the strength of that trait in of a larger population.
• Intra-individiual
  Ipsative
  A testtaker’s responses, as well as the presumed strength of measured traits, are interpeted relative to the strength of measured traits for that same individual.

Issues in personality test development and use

Many of the issues inherent in the test development process mirror the basic questions just discussed about personality assessment in general.

Personality assessment that relies exclusively on self-report is a two-edged sword

• Information is from ‘the source’
• The consumer of such information has no way of knowing with certainty which self-reported information is entirely true, partly true, not really true, or a lie.

Building validity scales into self-report tests is one of way that test developers have attempted to deal with the potential problems.
Another way is by consulting external sources such as peer raters.

Sometimes differences in the meaning of individual items, the traits measured by personality tests sometimes have different meanings as well.

Developing instruments to assess personality

Tools such as logic, theory and data reduction methods are frequently used in the process of developing personality tests.
Most personality tests employ two or more of these tools in the course of their development.

Logic and reason

Logic and reason may dictate what content is covered by the items.
The use of logic and reason in the development of test items is sometimes referred to as the ‘content’ or ‘content-oriented’ approach to test development.

Efforts to develop content-oriented, face-valid items can be traced at least as far back as an instrument used to screen WWI recruits for personality and adjustment problems.

A great deal of clinically actionable information can be collected in relatively little time using such self-report instruments, provided that the testtaker has the requisite insight and responds with candor.
A highly trained professional is not required for the administration of the test.

Clinical experience can be helpful in item creation. Or experts on the subject matter.

Theory

Personality measures differ in the extent to which they rely on a particular theory of personality in their development as well as their interpretation.

Data reduction methods

Data reduction methods include several types of statistical techniques collectively known as factor analysis or cluster analysis.
- One use of data reduction methods in the design of personality measures is to aid in the identification of the minimum number of variables or factors that account for the intercorrelations in observed phenomena.

The big five

The Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) is widely used in both clinical applications and a wide range of research that involves personality assessment.
Based on a five-dimension model of personality, the NEO PI-R is a measure of five major dimensions of personality and a total of 3-0 elements or facets that define each domain.

• Extraversion
• Neuroticism
• Openness
• Agreeableness
• Conscientiousness

Criterion groups

A criterion: a standard on which a judgment or decision can be made.
Criterion group: a reference group of testtakers who share specific characteristics and whose responses to test items serve as a standard according to which items will be included in or discarded from the final version of a scale.
Empirical criterion keying: the process of using criterion groups to develop test items.
The shared characteristic of the criterion group to be reached will vary as a function of the nature and scope of the test.
Development of a test by means of empirical criterion keying may be summed as follows

1. Create a large, preliminary pool of test items from which the test items for the final form of the test will be selected
2. Administer the preliminary pool of items to at least to groups of people
   1. Group 1. A criterion group composed of people known to possess the trait being measured
   2. Group 2. A randomly selected group of people (who may or may not possess the trait being measured)
3. Conduct an item analysis to select items indicative of membership in the criterion group. Items in the preliminary pool that discriminate between membership in the two groups in a statistically significant fashion will be retained and incorporated in the final form of the test.
4. Obtain data on test performance from a standardization sample of testtakers who are representative of the population from which future testtakers will come.
   The test performance data for Group 2 members on items incorporated into the final form the the test may be used for this purpose if deemed appropriate.
   1. The performance of Group 2 members on the test would then become the standard against which future testtakers will be evaluated.

The initial pool of items is created by inspiration from reviews of journals and books, interviews with patients, or consultations with colleagues or known experts.
Or the test developer may have relied on logic or reason alone or imagination to write the items.

The MMPI-2-RF

A true-false questionnaire to seek psychiatric problems.

MMPI-A

The same but for adolescents.

Personality assessment and culture

Many cultures have been under-represented in the development, standardization, and interpretation protocols of the measures used in personality assessment.
Especially with members of culturally and linguistically diverse populations, a routine and business-as-usual approach to psychological testing and assessment is inappropriate, if not irresponsible.
What is required is a professionally trained assessor capable of conducting a meaningful assessment, with sensitivity to how culture relates to the behaviours and cognitions being measured.
Acculturation and related considerations

Acculturation: an ongoing process by which an individual’s thoughts, behaviours, values, world-view, and identity develop in relation to the general thinking, behaviour, customs, and values of a particular group.
Through the process of acculturation, one develops culturally accepted ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.

A number of tests and questionnaires have been developed to yield insights regarding assessees’ level of acculturation to their native culture or the dominant culture.

Intimately entwined with acculturation is the learning of values.
Values: that which an individual prizes or the ideas an individual believes in.

• Instrumental values: guiding principles to help one attain some objective.
• Terminal values: guiding principles an a mode of behaviour that is an endpoint objective.

Also intimately tied to the concept of acculturation is the concept of personal identity.
Identity: a set of cognitive and behavioural characteristics by which individuals define themselves as members of a particular group. The sense of oneself.
Identification: a process by which an individual assumes a pattern of behaviour characteristic of other people, and referred to it as one of the ‘central issues that ethnic minority groups must deal with’.

Worldview: the unique way people interpret and make sense of their perceptions as a consequence of their learning experiences, cultural background, and related variables.